The present invention generally relates to a safety device for protecting one or more automobile passengers and, more particularly, to a knee protector assembly for protecting passengers' knees against injury in the event of an automobile collision.
The knee protector assembly in an automobile is not a new development in the art and is disclosed in numerous patent publications. For example, Japanese Laid-open Utility Model Publication No. 55-135651, laid open to public inspection in 1980, discloses a knee protector assembly comprising a single elongated knee protector having its opposite ends rigidly secured to opposite fixed portions of an automobile body structure so as to extend across the width of the automobile body structure generally beneath an instrument panel and frontwardly of the obviously bucket-type front seats. An intermediate portion of the knee protector is rigidly connected to a console box which is in turn rigidly mounted atop the tunnel of a floor panel through which a propeller shaft extends. This Japanese publication describes that, in the event of a collision, the energy induced upon the knees of, for example, a driver striking against the knee protector is in part taken up by the console box.
According to the above mentioned Japanese publication, the extent to which the impact energy can be absorbed by the knee protector depends on the physical strength with which it is physically connected with the console box. Therefore, the prior art knee protector assembly has a problem in that a technical difficulty is involved in the determination of a tolerable range of the physical strength exhibited by the connection between the knee protector and the console box.
The use of separate knee protectors arranged in line with each other so as to extend across the width of an automobile body structure is disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,291,899 patented Sept. 29, 1981. According to this U.S. patent, the knee protectors are rigidly connected at one end to opposite hinge pillars of the automobile body structure and at the other end to opposite side walls of the tunnel integral with the floor panel.